Now that silence is around him—deep, solemn silence—a new hope springs up within his breast. Some one might be near, straying through the forest or travelling along the trace. He knows there is a trace. Better he had never trodden it!
But another might be on it. Some one with a human heart. Oh, if it were only Lena!
“Hilloa!” he cries, again and again; “help, help! For the love of God, give help!”
His words are repeated, every one of them, and with distinctness. But, alas, not in answer, only in echo. The giant trunks are but taunting him. A fiend seems to mock him far off in the forest!
He shouts till he is hoarse—till despair causes him to desist. Once more he hangs silent. A wonder he has hung so long. There are few boys, and perhaps fewer men, who could for such a time have sustained the terrible strain, under which even the professional gymnast might have sunk. It is explained by his training, and partly by the Indian blood coursing through his veins. A true child of the forest—a hunter from earliest boyhood—to scale the tall tree, and hang lightly from its limbs, was part of his education. To such as he the hand has a grasp prehensile as the tail of the American monkey, the arm a tension not known to the sons of civilisation.
Fortunate for him it is thus, or perhaps the opposite, since it has only added to his misery by delaying the fate that seems certainly in store for him.
He makes this reflection as he utters his last cry, and once more suffers himself to droop despairingly. So strongly does it shape itself, that he thinks of letting go his hold, and at once and for ever putting an end to his agony.
Death is a terrible alternative. There are few who do not fear to look it in the face—few who will hasten to meet it, so long as the slightest spark of hope glimmers in the distance. Men have been known to spring into the sea, to be swallowed by the tumultuous waves; but it was only when the ship was on fire, or certainly sinking beneath them. This is but fleeing from death to death, when all hope of life is extinguished. Perhaps it is only madness.
But Pierre Robideau—for such is the name of the young hunter—is not mad, and not yet ready to rush to the last terrible alternative.
It is not hope that induces him to hold on—it is only the dread horror of death.